The effect of Titanium (Ti) on agriculture is remarkable; it can prompt the growth of crops and plant seedlings, and enhance root systems. Titanium can also improve the quality of fruits such as by increasing fruits' protein, vitamin C and soluble sugar content, increasing crop and plant resistance to drought, drowning, freezing, heat and disease, reducing pesticide residue, and improving a plant's ability to absorb fertilizer. In addition, Titanium can fundamentally improve utilization of chlorophyll, strengthening photosynthesis and improving enzyme activity in plants. Therefore, Ti is a beneficial element to plant growth and prospects for its application are very bright.
Ti is a kind of chemical element which widely exists in the natural world and its occupation in the earth's crust is about 0.6%; the content of Ti in the soil is about 1˜20 g/kg and the average is 6.8 g/kg. However, because Ti generally exists in an insoluble state, there is little Ti which can be collected by plants.
In order to have Ti easily absorbed by plants, it is necessary to provide soluble, long-term stable and non-sedimentary Ti products.
It is very difficult to produce a Ti formulation like this; Ti can stably exist in the form of TiO2 and the products of titanium with acidic moieties. Titanium salt solution is very unstable and it can only exist in a solution with high acidity; Titanium salt solution will hydrolyze when the pH is higher than 0.5. It is difficult for plants to absorb TiO2, however ionic Ti existing in a salt solution can be very easily absorbed by plants. Ti mainly exists in the form of Ti4+ and its solubility is very low. Ti is insoluble in solutions with pH values from 4 to 8. Ti4+ has very strong polarity because its electric charge is high and its radius is small, which can make it readily hydrolysable; particularly when the pH value of a solution is very high, Ti4+ is very easy to hydrolyze and it becomes a precipitate after its hydrolysis.